DAVID BIANCULLI

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TO BE OR NOT TO BE
June 28, 2014  | By David Bianculli

TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET

 

Jack Benny is saluted tonight by TCM, and rightly so – more so than almost any other performer in show-biz history, Benny dominated first radio, then TV, for decades at a time, while also enjoying success in the cinema. Tonight, some of those movie successes are televised, beginning with this 1942 satire in which Benny plays an egotistical Polish actor who uses his thespian skills to confound the Nazis. Carole Lombard stars, in what turns out to be her final screen appearance, and this Ernst Lubitsch-directed comedy sparkles with wit and, at the time it was made, political boldness.

 
 
 
 
 
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